The invention relates to an air blower system and more particularly, to a system for blowing heated air into ducts and trays for reducing moisture in paper.
In many copier environments and, in particular, in electrostatic copiers, controlling the moisture content contained in the final support material, upon which copies are produced, is extremely important in order to insure that constant high quality copy is produced. When the moisture level in the material is allowed to become excessively high, the copy material itself acts in a deleterious manner to effect the various processing systems. For example, excessive moisture carried by the support material can rob energy from a heat fuser and thus seriously reduce the quality of image fixing that is produced. Similarly, as in the reusable xerographic process where a toner image is electrically transferred from a photoconductive plate to the final support sheet, excessive moisture in the support material will degrade the electrical characteristics of the transfer system and result in relatively incomplete or non-uniform transferring of images to the final support material.
It is known in the prior art as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,848,988, assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, to convey excess heat from a fuser system to the trays holding copy sheets. In particular, a pair of evaporators are supported in close proximity to a backup fuser roll surface. When the surface temperature of the backup roll exceeds a predetermine operating level, vapors are collected in chambers provided with each of the evaporators. The vapor chambers are connected to condensers associated with each of the copy sheet supply stations by means of a vapor line. Each of the condensers includes a condensing coil to facilitate the discharge of energy into the copy sheet supply stations. Each condenser also contains an electric resistance heater to provide energy when the machine is in a standby condition or during periods in which a low volume of copy is produced.
The system as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,848,988 is a complex system of evaporators, condensers, interconnecting vapor lines and return lines, and auxiliary heating elements depending upon machine status. It would be desirable to provide a relatively simple and direct method of removing moisture from copy sheets in copy sheet trays. It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide a simple and direct system to raise the temperature of ambient air and directly convey the heated air to the copy sheets and copy sheet trays to remove humidity. It is another object of the present invention to provide a simple humidity sensor to control the operation of a heating fan providing moisture reducing air to the copy sheet trays.
Further advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the following description proceeds and the features characterizing the invention will be pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this specification.